Every year thousands of lives are lost due to the outbreak of fires in private dwellings as well as business offices. Usually, such deaths are due to smoke inhalation.
Typically, in the event of a fire, by the time fire fighters arrive at the incident, the dwelling has become filled with smoke and the fire fighters have to make an informed guess as to which rooms of the dwelling are likely to be occupied. Unfortunately, it often happens that a fire fighter will make a valiant effort to gain access to a smoke filled room only to find that this room is unoccupied. The time taken to reach the empty room not only endangers the life of the fire fighter but also wastes precious time needed to locate the occupants of other smoke filled rooms.
As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art of fire fighting, time is of the essence in a fire rescue operation and reliable information as to the occupancy of each room of a smoke filled dwelling would be extremely valuable in carrying out a successful rescue mission.
The present invention provides an apparatus which can be easily installed in a dwelling ahead of time, in order to provide vital information to a fire fighter in the event of a subsequent fire. Such apparatus provides the fire fighter with information as to how many persons should be expected to be within a particular room and also whether such occupants are adults or children.
Therefore, it is a primary feature of the present invention to provide a safety apparatus which overcomes the problems associated with determining how many persons occupy each room of a dwelling in the event of the dwelling becoming filled with smoke.
Another feature of the present invention is the provision of an apparatus which includes a strobe light placed in a window of the room of the dwelling to indicate how many persons occupy that room, such strobe light being remotely actuated by the fire fighter.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art by a consideration of the detailed description of the invention contained hereinafter taken in conjunction with the annexed drawings of a preferred embodiment of the present invention.